Good networking. Great inspiration!

Inspirational examples of people who are MAKING IT HAPPEN are all around us. Several StartupNation community members gathered in Northern California recently to meet up, get smarter, and get inspired by each other, and it was hosted at the TechShop, the brainstorm of an active StartupNation community member nicknamed, TechShopJim&nbsp;here in the StartupNation discussion forums. (Jim’s a StartupNation radio listener in the Bay Area on KNEW.)

It was great to hear the visions and capabilities of each entrepreneur who attended. The diversity of the group was amazing, too. High tech, low tech, B2B, B2C. But one thing was fairly consistent – everyone who attended was early stage.

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That’s where Jim, our host for the event, comes in. His business, like StartupNation’s, is dedicated to helping people at the very early stages of development, particularly product-based businesses. The Tech Shop, based in Menlo Park, CA, is a successful skunkworks for people who need to prototype, develop, and commercialize products. It was like a jungle jim for innovators – hologram machines, laser etching, 3D prototyping, welding, huge bins of tools and scrap parts, and a fun factor that was incredible.

Jim’s aggressive, open approach to the Tech Shop business he conceived and is now proving out is particularly inspiring – he went quickly from idea to execution and marketing and is now streamlining his formula for the first location so it can be replicated in other locations. He brags that people are calling him from all over the country to open their own Tech Shop using his formula. Did someone say, "franchise!"?

Congrats to Jim for his initiative, good thinking, openness to possibility, and initial success. It’s a good standard for fellow entrepreneurs in the StartupNation community.

Rich Sloan is chief startupologist and co-founder of StartupNation and host of StartupNation podcasts. He is also co-author of the acclaimed how-to book, StartupNation: America's Leading Entrepreneurial Experts Reveal the Secrets to Building a Blockbuster Business. Rich encourages you to [...]